To be sure, the government consolidation seems like an elegant solution to many of the region's problems.

Merging, say, the city of Detroit with Wayne County would streamline public services (one law enforcement agency, one parks department, one health department, etc) while spreading some of Detroit’s unique problems (i.e. poverty) across a wider tax base.

But consolidation would also require elected officials, bureaucrats, and public sector unions to negotiate a plan that would by necessity eliminate many of their jobs. There’s also question about whether communities really want to merge with neighbors, and take on someone else’ problems or accept someone else’s leadership.

These are tricky things. Indianapolis’ “unigov” which began merging the city with the surrounding county in the 1960s remains an ongoing process to this day.

At yesterday’s “Big Four” summit at the Detroit Economic Club, the question of consolidation was put to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and Wayne County Executive Bob Ficano. Their short-answer from both men was no, consolidations are unlikely. However, both were eager to embrace opportunities to share services.

Bing said he believes outright consolidation is a political non-starter.

“Because of home rule, that would be a tough sell in the city of Detroit,” said Bing. “Detroit and its citizens are very independent and want to maintain home rule. I do think there are some things we can do from a shared services standpoint without necessarily constituting a merger.”

Ficano concurred.

“There is going to be a sharing of services,” said Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. “Politically, do you merge all the functions? That would be very difficult to do initially, but there are areas where we are starting to work with.”

Ficano pointed to new policies that enables Detroit Police to immediately transfer prisoners to the Wayne County Jail, rather than holding them for 48 hours. He said the new policy allows the department to put more officers on the street.

All of which sounds perfectly reasonable and deliberative. The political obstacles to a grand regional government are duly noted and valid.

However, considering the myriad of municipalities and school districts provides overlapping services and overhead (i.e. the five separate Grosse Pointes and “in-burbs” like Highland Park, Lathrup Village, and Center Line) one must wonder why there isn’t a greater sense of urgency to begin strategic consolidation talks and/or aggressively push for more sharing of services.

It would be nice, for instance, to see SMART and DDOT folded into the regional authority that is expected to operate bus rapid transit. Merging Detroit and Wayne County’s health departments seems like low-hanging fruit. I look at the half-dozen Oakland County communities that dot the Woodward corridor and wonder why Royal Oak needs a police department that’s separate from Ferndale, Huntington Woods, Berkley, and Birmingham’s departments.

Where else would you like to see metro Detroit governments pursue shared service agreements and consolidation?